Grey Days

For about as long as I can remember, November has always been a dull, grey and dreary month. Weatherwise and mood-wise. At school, there were no half-terms to enjoy, Christmas holidays seemed like an aeon away (hah! not anymore!), and P.E. lessons outside in the wind and rain were pure torture. Especially when you were thwacked in the shins by a hockey stick, or slapped in the face by a cold, wet netball. In adulthood, November is the start of leaving home in the dark, and coming back in the dark. It also heralds the start of too-early in-your-face Christmas advertising. It’s all a bit demotivating, especially with the consecutive bleak, grey days that just seem to hang around and outstay their welcome.

Thinking about it, I do remember two or three years ago we had a November with record sunshine levels. How glorious it was. Crisp mornings, watery but cheerful sunshine. A little bit of warmth. Everything seemed brighter and chirpier, not muffled and desaturated under an oppressive blanket of cloud. Boo, I really don’t like it.

The hens don’t like it either. They’re both going through a moult, although Yoko is fine with it, Maureen has got the hump BIG time. We’ve been wondering if she’s getting ill; her egg laying gradually came to a stop around a week and a half ago, and her eating has slowed somewhat too. Usually she’ll go to bed with a tennis-ball sized packed crop, but lately she’s ben picking. She has had a limp for a few months, but I thought it was arthritis related, having previously been a battery hen that’s basically laid non-stop for the two years we’ve had her. Must affect her calcium levels. But in the last couple of days she’s started shaking feathers out, leaving small feathery heaps under her perch at night. Of course, if she’s not laying she doesn’t need to eat much, and the huffiness and general grump fits with a hen in moult. I hope that’s all it is, I really do.

I’ve been busy with my work, but somehow it just doesn’t feel like I’m getting very far. Like I’m furiously pedalling but the gear is too high and I’m moving forward at a snail’s pace. All this work is really starting to take it’s toll on my back and neck. Yesterday the muscles in my neck and head were so decrepid that I had a borderline migraine all day. “I knew you weren’t feeling well yesterday” Rich said to me this afternoon, “You go all quiet and introverted”. That’s what happens when your head is thumping with pain, and you can’t get rid of it, no matter what you take or however you rearrange yourself. All I know is that a trip to the osteopath is in order. Again. She tells me I should take up Yoga. I swim already but have taken to doing backstroke most of the time, as it puts less pressure on my neck and upper back. The only thing is, I have to wait until really late at night when hardly anyone is in the pool before I start the lengths. That way, I don’t run the risk of crashing into one of the many middle-aged incessantly yakking doggy-paddling overperfumed women that swim three abreast and take up all the space in the pool.

I have so much to do at the Smallest Smallholding; yet I still have this guilt issue of having to get work done first. But it always seems to take so much longer that I never get around to doing what I want to do. The crap weather doesn’t exactly motivate me either. I have finally persuaded Rich that there IS enough room for another veg plot, so at some point I’ll have to start digging that out, and I’m guessing, the mound of rubbish that the renegade builder dumped there way back in 1970-something. Rich has said that the proviso is that I properly edge all of my veg plots. Not that he’s in charge or anything, it’s just much easier to keep him happy. It’s a big task, edging all the plots, but I’ve agreed. I was careful not to agree when to do it though…

Ohhhh to have blue skies.